Category Archives: Stanford University

As we have previously reported, one of the latest development in China’s IP law is to build an IP cases system, which is being implemented in part as a case experiment at the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Thanks to the continuing efforts of the Stanford Guiding Cases Project (SGCP) under the leadership of Dr. Mei Gechlik, a number of experts including Judge Liu Yijun from Beijing IP Court, recently spoke at a seminar at Stanford University to discuss current status and application of the IP cases system.

According to Judge Liu at the Seminar, the Beijing IP Court is set to establish a principle that “subsequent cases should be adjudicated in accordance with effective judgements and rulings of prior similar cases.” At the current stage, judges of the Beijing IP Court are required to abide by effective judgements and rulings of the Court as well as upper-level courts that are applicable to the pending case. Meanwhile, judgements and rulings of prior similar cases from other courts at the same level should be referenced by judges adjudicating the pending case.

Judge Liu noted that parties are encouraged to submit prior effective judgments and rulings and lawyers in response, are actively submitting more and more cases. At the end of 2016, the Beijing IP Court used prior effective judgements or rulings in 763 cases. Cases were submitted 657 times by parties, and voluntarily invoked by judges in 106 instances. Of those 763 cases, over 200 followed prior judgements, about 80 were distinguished on the basis of different facts, and the rest, around 480, were treated as completely irrelevant or not submitted via appropriate procedures. When this data is compared to the 8,111 cases concluded by the Beijing IP Court in calendar year 2016, the case citation rate was 9.4% of all cases, which was a big increase compared to the citation rate of 2.1% that we calculated in this blog for the first ten months of 2016.

This IP Cases System can be accessed through an IP cases and judgments database (IP Case Database). In its trial version, we found 186 typical cases (典型案例), over 240,000 judicial judgments (裁判文书), laws and regulations (法律法规), intellectual property/legal index codes (知产码) (see www.faxin.cn) , opinions (观点), books (图书), journals (期刊), and review documents and decisions from Patent Reexamination Board of SIPO and SAIC Trademark Review and Application Board (两委文书). Many of judicial judgments included in the IP Case Database are a subset of judgments on China Judgements Online, which has over 35 million of judgments in total and over 260,000 judgments in the IP area. IPHouse (知产宝), another IP cases and judgments database, has recently told us that it has increased the total number of IP judgements on its database – their website lists around 350,000 cases, but we have heard that it is as high as 400,00. This is well in excess of the official China Judgments Online or the IP Case Database. The additional cases have reportedly been made available through direct outreach to various local courts.

These 186 typical cases in the IP Cases System are currently all trademark related cases, decided between 2000 and 2016. A majority of those cases (112 cases) are actually SPC’s guiding cases, and only a small part are cases from High Court or Intermediate Court (11 cases from High Court in different provinces and 23 Cases from Intermediate Court). Among cases from Intermediate Courts, cases from the Beijing IP Court dominate.

Panelists at the seminar at Stanford University suggested that all typical cases will go through a review process before posted to the database, which consists of review by experts, editing, and final review and release. But panelists at that seminar also noted that judges made the decision of which cases to be included in this database. It is unclear what criteria are used by judges and what judges’ role is through the case review process. To the extent that cases go through a curatorial process, they may also run the risk of being altered to serve particular doctrinal purposes – an issue that may have arisen with respect to other cases that have been considered model or guiding cases.

As for the quality of those cases and judicial judgments, key words search of some well-known doctrines in IP law returns very limited number of results on the IP Case Database. For instance, a search of the doctrine of equivalents (等同原则) returns zero typical cases, which might be because no patent typical cases are included yet, and search of principle of good faith (诚信原则) gives nine typical cases (primarily for trademarks). A search for cases adjudicated by well-known judges returns similar results, with only one typical case adjudicated by Song Yushui (宋鱼水), who currently sits on the Beijing IP Court as its Vice President and was recently confirmed as an alternative delegate to the Central Committee of the CPC. Similarly, same key word search of the judicial judgments in the IP Case Database yields more results, but still relatively small compared to total number of judgments included. A search of doctrine of equivalents gives 81 judgments, search of principle of good faith returns 312 judgments (around one-third on trademarks, one-third on anti-unfair competition, and the rest on everything else) and 74 judgments are adjudicated by judge Song Yushui. Compared to another legal database pkulaw.cn (北大法宝), which combines cases and judgements, the same key word search returns significant higher number of cases and judgments (337 for doctrine of equivalents, 455 for principle of good faith and 255 adjudicated by Judge Song Yushui). Such discrepancy raises questions of whether the IP Case Database is currently comprehensive or easily searchable.

One distinct feature to be noted of the IP Case Database is that each typical case has been given an indicator of whether the case should be followed or just referenced.

My overall impression: cases are cited more frequently in Beijing IP Court and the case experiment will continue. It seems that the Beijing IP Court intends to attract attention and application of the IP Cases Database and make it a national tool in the near future. However, at the current stage, it is not clear whether their database has the ability to gain significant usage among the IP law community. Of particular importance is whether more cases, particularly patent and copyright cases, will be included, and when that will happen remains unknown.

This blog has been prepared by Fan (Emily) Yang, JD Candidate, University of California Berkeley, 2019, with editorial assistance from Prof. Mark Cohen. The views expressed are the author’s own.

Recently, there have been two important developments involving IP-related guiding cases and precedent that shed light on these different approaches of the Supreme People’s Court, which is in charge of guiding cases, and the Beijing IP Court, which is looking at the role of precedent in China’s court system. But first some background:

One of the most important continuing efforts on guiding cases is the Stanford Guiding Cases Project (SGCP), which is under the able, enthusiastic and collaborative leadership of Dr. Mei Gechlik. The SGCP recently hosted a lively seminar at American University to discuss the latest developments, with a keynote by Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York (picture above). In addition to the Stanford project, Susan Finder has written about guiding cases in her excellent blog and other postings, Jeremy Daum wrote an excellent recent article on the actual use of guiding cases, and of course there is this blog and others, in addition to academic articles and recent SGCP research.

Another significant development in exploring a system of case precedent is the research base established with the approval of the Supreme People’s Court at the Beijing IP Court. The ecosystem evolving around that research base appears to me to be more practice oriented than theoretical. As an example of this practice-oriented approach, the IP court is looking at the role of amicus briefs to ensure the interests of non-parties are heard, or en banc rehearings to reverse prior precedent. A small, but important step in soliciting third party opinions has already been undertaken by the Beijing IP Court in a case involving trademark agents.

Among the two contrasting recent developments Regarding the guiding cases project, on March 9, the Supreme People’s Court released 10 IP-specific guiding cases; nine of these are civil and one is criminal. The cases span all relevant IP laws, including copyright, trademarks，patents, plant varieties and antitrust. Here is a link to a Chinese summary of the cases, and a machine translation of these summaries (source: IPRdaily.cn, google translate). I assume that the SGCP will do a professional translation of these in due course. According to the SPC press conference, IPR-related guiding cases now constitute 23% of the total number of guiding cases.

Nonetheless, recent citation data suggest that there has been little uptake of guiding cases in actual case decisions, as Jeremy Daum’s article points out in his posting:

“Guiding Cases are almost never referenced: Over a five-year period, Stanford found a total of 181 subsequent cases, and PKU found 241. To provide a frame of reference, Chinese courts complete trial of well upwards of 10,000,000 cases per year…

50% of the guiding cases were never referred to at all…

Almost half of the references found were to a single case; GC #24. …That case concerns traffic accidents,…”

If one compared the nationwide references to guiding cases using, as an example, the 561 opinions referencing a guiding case out of 8,723,182 cases on the China Judgments Online website for 2016 (using a simple keyword search to “guiding case”), the citation rate would be about 0.0006%.

These developments on IP related case law at the SPC might be compared to the data in the January 10, 2017 report of Beijing IP Court. The Beijing IP court cited 279 case precedents in 168 cases since the time the precedent base was established in 2016 until October 2016. Cases were cited 121 times by parties, and judges undertook their own effort to cite cases in 47 instances. In total, 117 cases relied on precedent in their decisions. Of the 168 cases, there were 51 instances where cases were not relied upon due to a difference in facts. There was no instance where a reversal was obtained of an earlier precedent. Of the cases cited, 31 were from the SPC, 132 from High Courts (including 117 from Beijing), and others were from local courts. If this data was further compared to the 8,111 cases concluded by the Beijing IP Court in calendar year 2016, the citation rate was a minimum of 2.1% based on the data provided through October, which is considerably higher than the guiding cases effort.

My impressions: the data from the Beijing IP Court suggests that the bar is using cases in its briefs, and the court is looking at these cases and exploring how to handle them as part of an overall system including amicus briefs, en banc review and other mechanisms. The SPC’s guiding cases project is a more intensely curated project that also addresses a much larger national challenge in introducing a new way of developing law to civil law educated judges and the bar. The comparisons between the two experiments are inexact as the Beijing IP court sits in one of China’s wealthiest cities, with a well-educated bench and bar, a sophisticated IP environment and considerable foreign (including American) interaction. It is not surprising that nationwide uptake of a precedent system using a limited number of guiding cases for a vast judicial system is more theoretical and slower than the one taking place at the Beijing IP Court using the 100,000 plus IPR cases that are adjudicated nationwide each year.

The China General Chamber of Commerce is hosting a program “China-U.S. Intellectual Property Cooperation Dialogue & Chinese Brands Going Global Forum” on April 11, 2016 from 9:30 to 12:30 in New York City. I will be moderating a session on IP developments in China, with leading companies, lawyers and officials.

George Washington University Law School is hosting a program with USPTO on IP developments involving China on April 14, 2016. The program looks at challenges faced by US companies in China and challenges faced by Chinese companies in the US. A dozen Chinese officials, including six judges will be attending the program. I will be moderating the program with Dean John Whealan. These programs are usually sell-outs, so please pre-register if you are interested in attending. Here is the draft agenda. Registration is required for security to gain access to the USPTO, here’s the link:http://goo.gl/forms/TeyiFahzY8.

The opinions reflected here are not necessarily the opinions of any organization, company, or government. They solely reflect the personal opinions of Mark Cohen and other named authors. When referring to this blog in the media, please do not attribute any opinion or comment to anyone other than the author(s).